Blog

With PianoEasy you learn a lot. Within a term people are playing around with their repertoires, making up their own blues or working with all their chords playing pop songs. Some people may already be composing their own song. Within two terms some people are doing lots of improvising; with the blues, with our jazz chords, with all those flat and minor chords. Within a year people are also reading quite advanced pieces and no one’s repertoire is the same. Within two years...

It’s a tragedy that nowadays people generally feel bad about their playing! It’s true! Most people who have had, sometimes years of piano lessons apologise and tell you they are not very good. Even performing musicians say they are scared of being found out for not being good enough. They often will tell you that they are just self-taught and can’t even read. Only a small percentage of our top players and some people who are blessed with a bit less of the “I care...

Being completely besotted with playing the piano myself, I believe that unfortunately Western music education, that is generally focussed on teaching people to make music by teaching them how to read, has created a society where now there is this mythical idea that making music is only either for those who are mysteriously gifted or for people who started at 3 years of age and practise for 8 hours a day…

Open up to a fresh take on an old piece in your repertoire. Pay close attention to the way you're playing each note, your posture and breathing, and think of how you are making those hammers hit the strings. Try playing loud, soft, fast, slow, sustained, snappy, straight, or swinging - see how the piece can change completely when you mix up the dynamics. You can also try changing the piece itself by adding notes or doubling up on them, changing words and melodies or altering the rhythm.

Being able to make things up as we go along is a great skill to have in life, and it's equally important in playing piano. A great example of that happened at a Ray Charles concert in 1958 when Charles and his band had played all of their songs and still had time to spare - he improvised a song he called "What'd I say?", which some say was the first soul song. It became so popular that he ended all of his performances with it from then on.

The PianoEasy “Empty Road” project is an initiative to help people with mental health difficulties find joy making music.

This song “Empty Road” was written by WAM nominee and PianoEasy student Lily Kate. It says “Life does not have to be an empty road. Sometimes it’s best to know that you have a song. Follow me and you can sing my song. It won’t go on for long. Life is a song”. Please contact Anneka if you would like to benefit from or...